But Winter Has Yet Brighter Scenes
by Belle of Books
Summary: "The world isn't beautiful, she thinks. It's ugly, muted in shades of brown and grey with the occasional pop of bloody, bloody red. It's a constant threat; its rare moments of peace and beauty are only a threat to their existence; a dangerous trap set to make them weaken their defenses and lose awareness of their surroundings." OR: Octavia & Bellamy try to get Clarke out a funk.


"It's been quiet for a few days." Raven slowly makes her way across the ground toward Clarke where she stands near the entrance to the makeshift med bay. Clarke turns her head to watch her approach, huffs a small breath. "What?" Raven grins, "that's good."

"I know it's good." Clarke shifts her body to face Raven as she draws close. "I know it's _good_, but I don't think it's gone this long before, and you know what happened the last time nothing happened for this long."

"You're worried, because nothing is happening." Raven repeats, her voice mildly scoffing.

"Okay," Clarke huffs. "I know it's ridiculous. But I-"

"I'm not trying to make fun of you," Raven says, her voice milder. "Something will happen again, and it will suck." She looks away from Clarke into the woods. "It's just a matter of time."

Clarke hums under her breath, rocks the balls of her feet against the ground, draws in a deep breath. Shivers. "It's getting colder," she adds. "We're going to have to make it through the winter somehow."

Raven nods.

Clarke looks over at Raven, tries to smile. "Sorry," she says. "I don't mean to be so—" her voice drops off, and she shrugs.

"Yeah," Raven says. "I know." Out of the corner of her eyes, Clarke can see Raven looking at her with a glint in her eyes Clarke can't seem to place. "Come on," she continues after a beat. "I think one of the minions had a question for you."

* * *

Sometimes it all becomes too much: the constant doubting and fears and anxieties and _fighting_. Oh god, the fighting. There's always something or someone, and she feels like it's all a never-ending struggle for survival and recognition.

She spends most of her time standing arguing with _everyone_. With Bellamy about decisions (_these are **joint** decisions, Princess,_ she hears over and over. _Joint, as in me and you_), with her mom about the authority issues, with the guards about their use of violence on patrols, with Jasper about god-knows what, and it just piles up and she wants to scream in their faces. _You don't understand_, she thinks angrily. You don't understand how _hard_ this is.

Sometimes, when she has a moment to really breathe and think about the Earth, she tries to remember those first few hours on the ground; she tries to envision their excitement and enthrallment and those few precious hours when they were still goddamn children, before the world crashed to pieces on their fragile shoulders, and they were left bracing themselves on the ground trying to remain alive. She forces herself to remember the excitement and the novelty of it all—that after the years of stories and pictures and times when the dreams of what could be were all she had for company, she finally found a new beginning. For brief moments, she tries to remember that it was beautiful; that the air had gently whistled through the green leaves, that the water flowed with a gentle _whoosh_ through the streams, that the green of the trees wasn't just green, but it was a never ending rainbow of color as vibrant to her eyes as the loudest cacophony of sounds is to the ears. And for a brief, _brief_ moment, she thinks she remembers. But then someone calls, she opens her eyes, and it is so far gone she doubts it ever happened at all. _Not real_, she thinks. _Not real_.

_The world isn't beautiful_, she thinks. It's ugly, muted in shades of brown and grey with the occasional pop of bloody, _bloody_ red. It's a constant threat; its rare moments of peace and beauty are only a threat to their existence; a dangerous trap set to make them weaken their defenses and lose awareness of their surroundings.

_People aren't beautiful anymore_, she thinks. The ugliness of their souls is corruptive; it destroys everything it touches and poisons any of the trust that's left in the world. The few good souls left in the mutated, destructive world of theirs were just as destroyed by the world as the worst of them. She looks at their faces, and can only see their scars. (_It's proof of their fragility,_ she thinks. _They could_—will—_be gone so easily, so quickly_). Every time she looks in the faces of the few she likes (love is too strong a word for this world), she thinks about each time they almost died. _They're all so fragile_, her mind says. _This world will take them before too long. _She mops up the cuts, repairs the damages, and just waits through the moments of peace.

(And somehow, in the midst of her thoughts and fears, she never fears for herself. _She's too far gone_, she believes. _At the end of the day, she will be the last one standing._ And it feels like the cruelest ending she could ever receive.)

* * *

She traps herself in the camp, loosing herself to the repetitive rhythm of taking care of the wounded and managing the affairs of the remaining members of The 100. She stops thinking, knowing that if she thinks, she will only become increasingly aware of the world that continues to fall to pieces around them and ever more conscious of the burden of leading people who cannot make up their minds if they want to be led.

"Princess," she hears as she folds precious scraps of fabric for the medical bay. "Princess," she hears again. She keeps folding, her head down, telling herself to breathe in and out.

She feels the strong weight of a warm hand being placed gently (oh so gently) on her shoulder and her breath hitches without warning. She closes her eyes, and tries to remember to breathe.

"Oh Clarke," Bellamy sighs, his voice low and sad. He wraps his fingers down over her shoulder and gently pulls it back toward him; she resists for a brief moment, but moves with his hand, turning her body to meet his front. She raises her eyes to meet his, and finds that she has nothing to say. He stares at her, his eyes warm, open, and _sad_, and she can only stare. "Octavia and I were going to go for a walk, and we wanted you to come."

She breaks away from their stare down, and turns back to the pile of linens in front of her. "I'm busy," she hears herself say.

"We'd both like you to come," Bellamy offers. "Octavia was actually the one who suggested it."

Clarke scoffs under her breath before she can stop herself, and hears Bellamy sigh in response.

"Okay," he says, moving toward the flap in the wall. "We'll be back before nightfall at least."

She can hear his steps stop before he exits the room, and catches her breath, waiting for him to continue. She hears him sigh again and continue moving toward the flap. "Wait!" she says. She keeps her face looking toward the wall, looks down at her hands that are gripping a piece of fabric with white-knuckled intensity. "Be careful," she says, not sure if she's saying it as a command or a request. "Be careful," she repeats.

"We will," she hears, Bellamy's voice low and reassuring. She breathes and hears him exits the room.

She wants to go with him; she wants to go with him so badly, to just leave the camp behind and walk into the woods, hiking over hills and making her way across streams. She wants to forget the responsibilities she has assigned herself in the camp, wants to forget the dangers in the forest, she just wants to _go_, goddamn it all, wants to _forget_ and _breathe_ and remember what life was like when everything was safe, before anyone was dead, and life had beauty and art (She craves the days when parental love was lavishly provided, when she wasn't aware of the fragility of life and of the inequalities that comprise human existence; she longs for the time when art was her escape and not a symbol of the perversion of power and cruel exploitation.).

But she stays. She stays in the camp with the rest of the people too weak or too afraid to leave the camp, tries to fool herself into believing that for all of the imbalance and cruelty within its walls, it is _safe_ and it can be _home_.

(But that's why Bellamy and Octavia leave so often, she knows. It's never really been their home, never been a place of safety and beauty, and its weaknesses, now so exaggerated on the ground, do nothing to make them feel comfortable. Octavia calls herself a grounder now, and hates being kept within the cage of the Ark. And Bellamy, Clarke knows with unwavering certainty, would go to hell and back to keep her happy (and safe and satisfied). So, they've adopted the titles of "scouts" for themselves. They leave several times a week to patrol the nearby forests, finding food supplies and discovering useful caves and doing other work they make up for themselves. She doesn't know what they talk about and never accepts the invitations she has been receiving from them for weeks. She envies them though; she envies their ability to leave if only for a few hours, to escape the confinement of Camp Jaha. And she hates herself for it; hates herself for feeling envious of the two that have had nothing and who have lost everything (_except each other_, her mind tells her. _Who do you have_?)).

* * *

It becomes a never-ending vicious cycle, and she grows ever more consumed in her responsibilities, in the almost soothing, but soul-sucking pattern of life within the camp. She stops taking the time to remember _(it's dangerous_, she finds_. _It only makes her weaker, lonelier, more upset).

One morning, not long after she had finally crawled into her bunk for a few precious hours of sleep, which had been long past the time the others had crawled under their blankets, she stirred into consciousness hearing her name being whispered. She garbled a few incoherent words, and buried herself deep under the furs, hoping that the person would leave. "Clarke!" she hears, the voice growing louder and more insistent. "You have to see this!"

Clarke groans into the blanket below her but pushes herself onto her elbows, letting her face fall into her palms. "What." she demands.

Raven plops herself on the cot, pushing Clarke away from the edge. "Well, you don't have to be like that."

"Like what?" Clarke asks, her words muffled in her hands.

"Grumpy." Raven retorts. "I thought you'd like to see what's going on outside. It's pretty."

_Pretty_, Clarke considers. She flips her hair out of her eyes and rolls on her side to look at Raven. She stares up at her and grows annoyed at the mischievous grin on Raven's face. "Ugh," she says.

Raven laughs and pats Clarke's shoulder. "I'll meet you outside. Although if you're not out in two minutes I'm coming back in and I'm bringing reinforcements."

_Ugh, _Clarke thinks. But she pushes herself all the way up, and buckles on the scant furs they all call coats. She pushes her curls back from her face, and frowns at the madness. She opens the flap to the outdoors, pauses, and inches her way outside.

Everyone is laughing, pointing at the sky, grabbing at each other's sleeves while showing each other what the other has already seen. It's _joyful,_ and she's so confused. And then she sees it (them): the soft, quiet offerings falling from the sky, one on top of the other. They are falling to the ground, melting as soon as they land, but they fill the sky, softly descending from the clouds up above. She stands on the cold ground and just _watches_, sees the ground start to become dusty white, glimpses the white snowflakes resting on people's hair, hears muted sounds, feels the cold, wet (almost tickling) wisps of snow falling on her cheeks and nose. She tilts her head back and stares into the grey sky and watches as the snow falls. It's _beautiful,_ she thinks for a quick second. It's soft and delicate and immeasurable, and it covers everything in its own unique blanket.

"It's rather cold, don't you think." Clarke hears the suppressed pleasure in Bellamy's mock scoff, rolls her eyes, and turns to see him approach.

"Rather," she agrees, giving him a half smile.

He chuckles to himself, reaching up a hand to rub the back of his neck. He looks up at her from beneath his lashes, and she catches a breath behind her teeth. He stares at her with the warm, brown eyes that seem, in that instant, completely at odds with the frosty snowflakes clinging to his eyelashes and nesting in his hair. She stares back at him in return, _seeing_ him for the first time in days (_weeks? months?_). He stands, looking at her with such pleasure and joy that she feels like she can't breathe. (She can't remember the last time she's seen him look that pleased; _has she ever_, she wonders). As she gapes at him, she realizes she's almost smiling, that her lips are turned up, and she's almost _confused_. She quickly turns away from him, reaching up her fingers to touch her lips, wonders if he looked at her for the same reason she gazed at him.

She shakes herself from the stupor and forces down the _joy_ and _peace_ she had felt for just a second. "This cold could be dangerous," she states. "We should make sure everyone is dressed okay so that no one gets frostbite."

She looks back to Bellamy to see if he agrees, and manages to catch his face fall for a brief moment. His wall is back up in only a second, and she wonders if she imagined it. "Alright, Princess." He nods at her, hesitates as if he is going to say something, but turns away. "Alright."

* * *

She works hard for the next two days as the snow falls in short bursts, slowly piling up on the ground. (And true to her prediction, two morons did end up with frostbite, the _idiots_).

Three days after the first snowfall, she's woken up again by a persistent whisper of her name. "Clarke," she hears, the word rumbling low and deep. "Clarke." A pause. "Oh for god's sake" and then a finger prods her, once, twice. "Clarke, wake up!"

"Dear god, Bellamy!" she explodes. "What."

"Morning, Princess." Bellamy rolls back on his heels from where he was crouching on the ground. He smiles at her, and it's gentler than she would expect.

"What?" she asks again.

"Octavia and I are leaving in ten minutes, and you're coming with us."

She feels her heart stop and then quicken and she turns to burrow her face in the covers. "No."

He pushes the blankets down gently and smoothes her hair out of her face for her. "Yes," he replies, gently but firmly. "We have something we want to show you."

Clarke clenches her fists in the blankets. "I have work I need to do and both of us shouldn't be gone at the same time."

Bellamy begins to pull the blankets off of her. "It can wait," he says. "It can all wait."

She sits up in the bed, biting her lip and watching as he moves toward the door. "We're waiting outside." He pauses by the door and looks back at her. "I know you don't want to come, but we found something we want to show you. Both of us…ten minutes," he reminds her.

She drags herself out of bed and pulls on the furs. _It's irresponsible_, she tells herself. _It's not worth it_. _I'll just go tell them to go without me._

Clarke steps outside of the Ark, and her breath catches in her chest. The sun has only begun to rise, but they cannot see a thing through the heavy dark clouds. Everything around them is muted—the colors, the sounds. The guards and people near the fires talk in hushed tones, and the sky is a dulled grey, even the fires in the distance appearing hazy and unsure. It's so _quiet_ and the snow keeps falling down. She sees Bellamy and Octavia waiting at the gate, their dark brown heads leaning together as they quietly talk to each other. As she walks toward them, Octavia looks up first, almost smiles, but then shakes her brown hair down her back, says, "it's about time," and strides through the gate.

Bellamy looks at her retreating back and rolls his eyes with an amused fondness, and holds one arm out toward the gate. "After you."

She looks at him, huffs, and grabs the pack in his hand, slinging it across her back as she moves through the gate. Clarke follows Octavia into the woods, and they walk for what seems like miles in silence. The woods have gathered the snow on their branches and everything is _white_. Where they walk, she can tell no one has been in days; it is simply _deserted_. And as they walk, she finds herself adjusting to the forest, hears the snow fall to the ground and the quiet echoes of wild life deep in the forest. It is _beautiful_, she thinks. The show is heavy and white and there is no brown, no red, no reminders of the constant struggles that the Earth consists of. At some point on the walk, Bellamy passes Clarke to walk near Octavia, and as Clarke stares around the forest, Octavia and Bellamy quietly talk and smile at each other (like they like each other, the _idiots_, Clarke thinks).

They (very) slowly make their way up a mountain, pushing onward through the heavy snow, until they reach a plateau that almost seems to lead them on a decline toward the edge of a cliff. Octavia and Bellamy go ahead to a log that rests in front of the woods and lay down their packs by its side. Clarke makes her way forward, stares, and has no words to say. The cliff drops off in a steep decline, but below her is a wooded valley, blanketed in white with low-handing clouds beginning to blow in near the horizon. The snow continues to fall as she stands by the cliff, and it is _new_ (and it is beautiful).

She looks over her shoulder at Bellamy and Octavia, but they are smiling at each other with matching grins. As she stares at them, they turn their faces toward her, and she cannot help but give them a matching smile. Bellamy breaks out an even wider grin, and her heart (the _traitor_) flutters in response. She turns her head back to the valley and feels heat as Bellamy moves forward to her right shoulder. "We've been coming here for months now."

She tilts her head in his direction, giving him unspoken permission to continue. His voice lowers, "we needed to, you know, do stuff," he says awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck, "and we found this overlook. So sometimes we just come up here."

Octavia comes forward to stand at Bellamy's other shoulder and looks down over the valley. "We figured it'd be pretty in the snow," she says, her voice low, and almost sad.

Clarke looks across at the both of them, sees Bellamy's head lower toward his sister, watches at he bumps her and his face lightens with fondness, "I think you figured it'd be pretty." Clarke tries not to stare, but nevertheless watches as Octavia's face lightens and her lips turn up into a smirk.

"Well, I was right," she retorts and bumps Bellamy back. He falls back and utters an exaggerated groan and both Clarke and Octavia roll their eyes. "Dork," Octavia mutters under her breath.

He resumes his position next to Clarke, and smiles down at both of them, snow piling in his dark curls, dampening them and making them even curlier and frizzier than normal. He grins out at the valley, his face peaceful for the first time Clarke can remember in a long time.

_It's beautiful_, she lets herself think. _This moment is beautiful_. She thinks about Bellamy's and Octavia's special spot and that they've been trying to get her here for weeks; she looks out the snow dampened valley and the mist beginning to creep across it; she glances at the siblings, the two special friends she feels lucky enough to know. _It's (they're) beautiful_.

She's startled from her contemplation when Bellamy swings an arm around her shoulders and draws her to his warm side. Without hesitation, she places her arm around his waist and hugs him back in return. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him wrap a hand around an unwilling Octavia's head and draw it close for him to kiss. _Dork_, she thinks, echoing Octavia's comment. _Stupid, sweet, strong dork._

Octavia breaks away and moves back to the log, and Bellamy and Clarke slowly break away to join her. Clarke tries to compartmentalize. _That's enough of that,_ she tells herself. She goes to grab her pack, and the siblings look at her with mutual glances of muted disapproval.

"Hell no," Octavia states. "We're not going back yet."

Clarke opens her mouth to give a token statement of disapproval, but can't make herself do it. She moves her jaw back and forth, shakes her head, and places the pack down. Bellamy and Octavia exchange pleased, amused glances, and Bellamy moves over for her to sit between them.

They open the packs and begin to snack, the other two quieting chatting about nothing. And as they sit, Bellamy wraps his arm around Clarke, this time pulling her in for a sweet, long kiss on her head (she closes her eyes, moves closer, _breathes_), and the snow continues to fall in its silent majesty.

"It's really quite beautiful, isn't it?" she says.

"Quite," he replies.


End file.
